© Mohammad Rasool Adil/AFP/Getty Images
Afghan police carry the body of a civilian into a hospital morgue after the suicide attack in Khost province.
A suicide bomber driving a minibus full of explosives has attacked a base in eastern Afghanistan used by Nato troops and CIA operatives, killing three Afghan civilians and a security guard and injuring at least seven others.
The attacker struck when his vehicle was detained at a checkpoint a short distance from the east gate of the base in Khost province, also known to locals as "the old airport", the deputy provincial governor Abdul Waheed Patan told the Guardian.
"The security people stopped the bus at the checkpoint, but he kept going for a few more metres then detonated the explosives," Patan said by phone from Khost. "Two drivers who bring passengers from town to the area near the base, one civilian passerby and one security guard were killed."
The provincial police chief, General Abdul Qayoum Bakaizoi, confirmed the attack had happened at around 8am near one of two main gates to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman.
The attack came almost exactly three years after a much more devastating suicide bomber hit US intelligence officers operating out of FOB Chapman. A Jordanian doctor and militant posing as a double agent, he killed the station chief and six other CIA employees as well as a Jordanian intelligence official.
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